The RIAA either accepts it and goes through with the case, or they drop the case altogether. It's win-win. It's like we have the plans to the Death Star!
AFAIK the RIAA is facing a counterclaim and thus can't drop it. They're being counterattacked. Put these facts together and it becomes obvious that "It's a trap!"
When every news station is saying "CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE APPROACHING" and (in the first place) I live BELOW SEA LEVEL, I don't think it's extraordinarily insightful thinking that's required to evacuate.
There's a category 5 hurricane approaching and will hit in a few days. There's at least a million people attempting to flee to safety, which means that there's not only a gridlock of traffick but also a shortage of housing and other resources in nearby areas. Given this, there's no guarantee that fleeing will actually get me out of the storm's way, and even if it does, that I can get food and water while in evacuation. Furthermore, I risk losing all my earthly possessions in the aftermath if I'm not home to defend them. I live below sea level, but there's a dam and a pump system between me and it, both which are designed to take a storm. Finally, the act of fleeing will, even in the best case, severely strain my financial resources.
We know that the dam and the pumps failed and the city flooded, but the people staying in only knew that it might happen. Fleeing was a risk, staying was a risk; and no matter how insightful you are, you can still guess wrong.
I was in no sense advocating the sort of 'survivalist' approach you seemed to read into my post.
It's kinda hard to not read it into a comment about "Darwinistic culling".
What I was pointing at was entire neighborhoods (it seemed to be groupthink, from this outsider's view) disregarding warnings until it was well past too late, then complaining about the circumstances their idiocy left them in.
In a crisis, it makes sense to stay with your friends and neighbours, since they are more likely to help you than total strangers. This is likely the reason why the phenomenon of groupthink evolved in the first place; in this particular instance, it was entirely appropriate. And, again, it is not idiocy to guess wrong.p>
The barrage of looting that took place suggests that any rational calculus that took place was based on a HOPEFUL breakdown of the rule of law and amoral opportunism, more than anything.
The barrage of looting lends further credence to the "defend your home" argument for staying.
Yes, perhaps the "American People are Sheep" analogy is overused. This doesn't make it wrong (cf. Congressional Re-election Rates). Simply because something is distasteful isn't in itself a criticism of its utility.
It's not just distasteful, it's also a bastard child of true scotsman, appeal to emotion and appeal to ridicule fallacies: only a sheep would do something I don't like, so if you do it, you are a sheep. It's a way of dismissing your opponents claims without having to actually answer them; as such, it needs to be opposed at every turn, for politics are already pathetic enough as is.
The whole notion of us destroying the Earth (or its biosphere, which is what I assume you meant) is ridiculous. At worst we can make things very unpleasant for ourselves, that's all.
We are burning fossil fuels thousands or millions of times faster than they regenerate.
Not only does this not destroy the Earth, but might actually help it. It returns the carbon from the fossil fuels to the biosphere, and warms the climate, widening the tropic and subtropic areas of the planet, and possibly even melts icecaps, opening a new continent (Antarctic) and a huge island (Greenland) for colonization.
Global warming is harmful to us in the short term because it changes the weather patterns, and the transitional period is chaotic until a new balance is found. However, the end result is increased biomass and biodiversity.
Cities keep expanding and consuming additional land which never returns to its natural state.
This is patently ridiculous. Every abandoned city in history has reverted to its "natural" state; even Chernobyl is busily turning into a forest.
Animal species are going extinct at unprecedented rates.
No, they aren't. Some species are going extinct, some are adapting, and yet others are thriving, spreading and generating new populations which will in time turn to new subspecies and then species. This has happened every time there's been an upheaval of some kind in environment, and is simply business as usual.
It should also be noted that the previous mass extinctions resulted in increased biodiversity as well, since they left the most adaptable species to fill the vacant ecological niches. Mass extinctions are like forest fires, evolutionarily speaking: it's nasty to be caught in one, but the forest needs them to clean up all the accumulated crap every now and then.
These trends cannot continue forever. That should be obvious and is not a matter of opinion or morality.
Obviously. They'll stop as soon as a new balance is reached.
So, we can either stop soon while the earth is still a relatively good place to live, or wait until we hit carrying capacity. At that point the population is controlled by poverty/starvation and there are no nice places left.
Earth's carrying capacity is not fixed, but depends - amongst other things - from our technological abilities. Nor are we necessarily limited to Earth, if we can bring the cost of space travel down. And in any case, most industrial nations have zero or negative population growth.
I'm not saying we've already hit the wall, or that I know when we would hit it. But at least admit that there are limits out there somewhere, and if present trends continue, we will reach them.
One of the present trends is that we're becoming better and better at using the resources at our disposal, as well as reaching for new resources. So no, it isn't at all certain that we're going to hit our limits, since they keep on getting pushed further away.
A heavy flywheel mounted on magnetically-suspended bearings spinning in a vacuum is much more efficient than charging and discharging a battery, lasts for a longer time, and is probably much cheaper.
And as an added bonus, when it does fail, it will do so in a particularly spectacular fashion:).
Seriously, we're talking about all the stored energy getting released at once if/when the bearings fail and the thing touches down. It'll bounce around violently and randomly, get deformed and tear itself into pieces which will fly around in every direction. It's like a bomb, except that most bombs require a trigger to blow and this requires a system to keep it from blowing up; any kind of glitch in the control computers and kaboom.
More deaths have occurred due to Fossil fuels than nuclear energy. Now lets take the hippy route and suggest we go to alternative energy. No more than 20% of a countries supply can be powered by wind and have a stable grid (frequency fluctuations).
Coming to think of it: given that someone has to build and service a windmill, and that you need a lot of them to replace even a single nuclear power plant, and that working on a high tower is inherently dangerous, which would actually cause more deaths, wind or nuclear ?
And just like Katrina, anyone too stupid to look after their own behinds and expect the government to come save them is an idiot who probably is due for a Darwinistic culling.
One of the reasons the society - whose coordination center the government is - exists in the first place is to assist people in emergencies. It is hardly unreasonable to expect it to do its job.
What shamed me as an American during Katrina wasn't the much-publicized "failure" of Bush and co. No, what disgusted me was that in a society with free public education to age 18, widespread information-distribution technology, and AMPLE transportation resources, we have apparently bred a new generation of sheep, er, Americans with no interest in helping their fellow-man, so dependent and with so little motivation that even self-preservation can't get them to lift a finger in their own interest.
Yes, of course. Fortifying in your own home rather than fleeing is clearly a sign of being deserving of Darwinistic culling. It implies sheepdom, rather than, say, carefully weighting the advantages of having shelter and being able to guard your property against post-evacuation looting against possibly - not certainly, since they are unpredictable - being out of the storm's path but losing your property and quite possibly dying from lack of food, water and shelter on the run - remember, there's hundreds of thousands of other people on the run too.
This whole "people are sheep" has become a meme repeated by people with delusions of grandeur. Ironically enough, mindlessly repeating a meme makes these people themselves the very sheep they so despise.
I have to admit I'm a bit torn by this sentiment. On the one hand, yes, this is shaping up to be rather tragic. On the other, isn't this sort of thing rather avoidable by just not living there?
No. There are not enough safe areas on Earth to hold all or even the majority of the population, and even those are safe only in relation to some other area. Add the facts that the tighter you pack humans, the easier it is for plagues and such to spread, the more dependent on infrastructure they become, and the more destruction any disaster that does happen causes, and it becomes obvious that "don't live in a dangerous area" is not viable advice.
It then did a quick calculation (lookup table) to determine the height of the wall at that distance, subtracted half that height from the center of the screen, and plotted a vertical line in the color of the wall.
Wouldn't it make more sense to simply store the top and bottom coordinates directly to the lookup table ?
In any case, you'd also need a Z-buffer to draw sprites correctly, especially if one is half behind a corner and half visible.
Technically, all of the data in a computer is really just a bunch of ones and zeros, so assuming a fairly even mix of those two possibilities, writing over everything with zeros would only change half of their data.
Actually, since one and zero is zero, it wouldn't change the actual data. However, it would change the representation of the data to allow for extremely efficient compression, thus freeing up a lot of hard drive space. This guy was simply doing his duty and doing it well.
This is the guy who just nominated two lobbyists for cabinet positions immediately after announcing that there would be no lobbyists in the Obama government.
This doesn't prove the LHC is dangerous, but it does prove they cannot prove the LHC isn't dangerous.
Actually, as it happens, cosmic rays have (orders of magnitude) more energy than LHC collisions, and bombard Earth's atmosphere all the time. So worrying about the LHC is like facing a firing squad and worrying that you're going to be mauled to death by the leader's chihuahua.
Some would have thought that a bunch of convicts shipped to British colonies should not have the right to freedom of speech and expression because knows what they can do with that to upset the queen, yet look what happened when those very same convicts got their freedom of speech.
They proved that they're no different than the people who banished them ?
By your reasoning Hitler was the "rightful ruler" of Germany, and could not be opposed on the basis of what he did to his people, after all, he got their permission once.
Hitler wasn't opposed on the basis of what he did to his people, he was opposed on the basis of invading other nations around him. Prior to said invasions he wasn't opposed, in fact he was widely admired.
Muslims think mohamed was a good guy, THE example of a leader. Read his biography once and you'll see the problem with that. Hitler and Stalin were but cute poodles, sweet and innocent, compared to him.
I sincerely doubt that. But even if it were true, why would it make modern-day eqyptians undeserving of freedom ?
If the muslim brotherhood gets control over the state of Egypt, world war III starts. It's that simple. It's that simple. And if Iran isn't contained soon, the same will happen.
To the best of my knowledge Egypt has neither the military power or allies to start a large-scale war. The same is true of Iran. Perhaps you've been watching "Mummy Returns" too much ?
Adults drink for different reasons. For being responsible for a shattered marriage, spawning a tribe of stupid kids, betraying their dreams and ideals, etc. Also, adults drink to forget - how the priest fucked them in the ass ever Saturday afternoon, how their parents beat them, first grade, dancing lessons, whatever...
I think someone's projecting here.
Then there are adults who drink to get fucked up and release inhibitions. We call them CRAZY MuthaFUCKAZZZ.
No, we call them normal people. Or at least most people I've seen drunk, kid or adult, have simply been having fun.
OK SO LIKE FUCK YOU HOMIE! NO NEOTWORK EXEC FAGATOH COULD BHANDLEW FUCEN RALFEEE! I W(OUDL DOGGI EBAG SOME WHOARS AN DPUSH THEM A$#OUND WITH MY DICK LI A FUCEN WHEELBARORWO AN DMAKE THOSE SLAPHOELS LIKKKK IT! IT WOODL BE LARBLE TV!
Now, let's see - how far did that further the discourse?
It took the discourse straight to Hell, you semi-sentient brown-nosing hypocritical piece of illiterate chatterbot droppings. You fail the Turing test. I spit in the general direction of you and everyone who looks like you. Do you still abuse sexually immature simians, you evolutionarily backwards deviant ? I would tell you to fuck off, but that mental image is too disturbing to entertain.
For ruining this fine thread with your insane drivel, pond scum would recoil from calling you brother. The things Lovecraft dreamed of would be afraid to see the twisted mass of blood-sucking tentacles that is your mind. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on your necrotic soul, for not even those bound for the Pit deserve to bear your presence for all eternity.
You are filth. You are excrement. You are Ralph Spoilsport, Slashdot user 673134, and from the depths of cyberspace I stab at thee !
In fact, I'm surprise that you are attempting to equate passing out your class notes so future class members can cheat with what Rosa Parks did.
How is reading someone else's class notes cheating ? And how is it different from reading, say, a book on the subject ?
I suppose you could use those notes as a cheat sheet in a test, but then again, since the subject needs to be taught before the test, you could just as well use your own. So, enlighten me, for I simply don't get how passing your notes to someone else would allow them to cheat ?
A lot of people gave up their seats and moved to the back of the bus because sure, they weren't looking for trouble. Rosa Parks accepted trouble as the price of change.
Rosa Parks wasn't a student. A student is a subhuman with no rights, at least in respect to his school. That's what this case - and all others I've ever heard of - have made absolutely clear.
He is NOT a child. He certainly understands that the consequence of breaking the law is to go to prison. Just because he didn't care about the consequences isn't a defence.
The question isn't whether he broke the law or not; he did. The question isn't whether he should be punished or not either; he should. No, the question is: should he be extradited to the USA, where he will be punished with a complete disproportionate jail sentence because the crime he did brought into light the negligence of a government institution ?
The whole issue of "bad security" is a red herring. A number of years back, a friend of mine used to leave his keys in his car and his car unlocked in case a friend of his needed to borrow it. One cold winter night a guy stole his car, held up a store, and then wrapped the car around a telephone pole. Guess what? It was still a crime and the guy still went to jail. There's no requirement that you make your car hard to steal before stealing it becomes a crime.
That's fine. It's his car, after all. Now if it was a government car, with a laptop full of sensitive information in the trunk, and your friend insisted on the thief getting decades of jail time simply because he brought your friends negligence into light... that would not be fine.
And lets face it: this guy didn't steal anything, nor did he hold up a store. He broke into a computer system chasing UFOs. He's guilty of digital trespassing at worst, while whoever is responsible for that computer is guilty of utter negligence of duty, which is a far more serious crime. That is the reason they want to go tough on him: to turn attention away from their own misdeeds. So no, bad security is not the red herring here, the UFO chaser is.
And it seems to me like the _real_ problem of both this guy and Hans (the other with the aspie defense) is actually sociopathy. Both seem to be self-centered arseholes, and both seem to think that the law is some kind of game, among other symptoms.
So some guy who went broke into a government computer to look for UFOs is the same as a guy who murdered his wife, and a psychopath besides. A fine example of logic, that.
And for the record, I'm sending you the social message "you've just said something unbelievably stupid" right now.
Another way, of course, is that all people, not just the rich, would have more money in their pockets with less government, and the freedom to choose the health care and retirement plans that are most appropriate for their individual situations.
Having a few pennies more in no way compensates for ending the social programs, from free elementary education to emergency rooms and public libraries. The freedom you are talking about is the freedom to serve the rich as an indentured servant and then die in the streets when you're no longer useful.
The current assumption is that people don't have the discipline or intelligence to save for themselves, so the government should do it for them.
No, the current assumption is that our economic system concentrates money and power into the hands of the few, and that these few are unrepentant psychopathic assholes who will happily watch the rest starve to death unless they are forced to do something about it.
That's a gross impingement on personal and financial freedom, bordering on the unconstitutional.
It is necessary, thought - the alternative is a nasty and short life for almost everyone.
The Libertarians will never hold a significant amount of power because most of the public rejects their pro-drug legalization plank, as current generations have been conditioned that drugs == bad.
Well, I for one reject their whole platform. I suspect the public do too, and would even without any "conditioning". But of course that might indicate that there's a flaw in said platform, and who would want to believe that about their ideology ?
But the key to remember is that your patriotism is not my patriotism in a free society.
This makes the whole concept of patriotism utterly meaningless, since the sentence "I'm patriotic" can mean absolutely anything, and thus conveys no information. Words are only useful if they have a commonly agreed meaning; everyone redefining patriotism to mean whatever they want it to mean makes the word useless. This is true even in a free society.
Now excuse me, I need to go be patriotic in a toilet.
That's true, however out nation is on the verge of a crisis. We already experienced the beginnings of it this past summer when oil hit $150 a barrel. Come the year 2020 or 2030 when oil is as scarce as gold, and America is in economic chaos as a result, it would probably be better to have FEWER mouths to feed, not more.
Better get fusion power working before that. Hydrocarbons (oil) can be manufactured easily from carbon dioxide and water once we have endless free energy for the power grid. And importing lots of smart people - nuclear physicists and engineers - would probably help a lot there.
"The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is responsible for ensuring that foreign workers do not displace or adversely affect wages or working conditions of U.S. workers."
The law of supply and demand says that this is impossible to ensure.
Why not vote for a those willing to cut both taxes and spending (e.g., Libertarians)?
Because cutting taxes and spending will benefit the rich and harm everyone else, and most people are not rich.
Furthermore, all those "the poor should beg for charity in the streets" and "why should I pay for anyone's hospital bills ?" comments associated with libertarians make it very clear what life would be like for most people in a libertarian world: short and nasty. That's why libertarians will never hold a significant amount of power: their position is against the best interests of most people.
Finally, there's nothing like recession to drive home the need for social security.
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK the RIAA is facing a counterclaim and thus can't drop it. They're being counterattacked. Put these facts together and it becomes obvious that "It's a trap!"
There appears to be a bit of a sample bias in a study where you ask people if they're still alive ;(.
There's a category 5 hurricane approaching and will hit in a few days. There's at least a million people attempting to flee to safety, which means that there's not only a gridlock of traffick but also a shortage of housing and other resources in nearby areas. Given this, there's no guarantee that fleeing will actually get me out of the storm's way, and even if it does, that I can get food and water while in evacuation. Furthermore, I risk losing all my earthly possessions in the aftermath if I'm not home to defend them. I live below sea level, but there's a dam and a pump system between me and it, both which are designed to take a storm. Finally, the act of fleeing will, even in the best case, severely strain my financial resources.
We know that the dam and the pumps failed and the city flooded, but the people staying in only knew that it might happen. Fleeing was a risk, staying was a risk; and no matter how insightful you are, you can still guess wrong.
It's kinda hard to not read it into a comment about "Darwinistic culling".
In a crisis, it makes sense to stay with your friends and neighbours, since they are more likely to help you than total strangers. This is likely the reason why the phenomenon of groupthink evolved in the first place; in this particular instance, it was entirely appropriate. And, again, it is not idiocy to guess wrong.p>
The barrage of looting lends further credence to the "defend your home" argument for staying.
It's not just distasteful, it's also a bastard child of true scotsman, appeal to emotion and appeal to ridicule fallacies: only a sheep would do something I don't like, so if you do it, you are a sheep. It's a way of dismissing your opponents claims without having to actually answer them; as such, it needs to be opposed at every turn, for politics are already pathetic enough as is.
The whole notion of us destroying the Earth (or its biosphere, which is what I assume you meant) is ridiculous. At worst we can make things very unpleasant for ourselves, that's all.
Not only does this not destroy the Earth, but might actually help it. It returns the carbon from the fossil fuels to the biosphere, and warms the climate, widening the tropic and subtropic areas of the planet, and possibly even melts icecaps, opening a new continent (Antarctic) and a huge island (Greenland) for colonization.
Global warming is harmful to us in the short term because it changes the weather patterns, and the transitional period is chaotic until a new balance is found. However, the end result is increased biomass and biodiversity.
This is patently ridiculous. Every abandoned city in history has reverted to its "natural" state; even Chernobyl is busily turning into a forest.
No, they aren't. Some species are going extinct, some are adapting, and yet others are thriving, spreading and generating new populations which will in time turn to new subspecies and then species. This has happened every time there's been an upheaval of some kind in environment, and is simply business as usual.
It should also be noted that the previous mass extinctions resulted in increased biodiversity as well, since they left the most adaptable species to fill the vacant ecological niches. Mass extinctions are like forest fires, evolutionarily speaking: it's nasty to be caught in one, but the forest needs them to clean up all the accumulated crap every now and then.
Obviously. They'll stop as soon as a new balance is reached.
Earth's carrying capacity is not fixed, but depends - amongst other things - from our technological abilities. Nor are we necessarily limited to Earth, if we can bring the cost of space travel down. And in any case, most industrial nations have zero or negative population growth.
One of the present trends is that we're becoming better and better at using the resources at our disposal, as well as reaching for new resources. So no, it isn't at all certain that we're going to hit our limits, since they keep on getting pushed further away.
And as an added bonus, when it does fail, it will do so in a particularly spectacular fashion :).
Seriously, we're talking about all the stored energy getting released at once if/when the bearings fail and the thing touches down. It'll bounce around violently and randomly, get deformed and tear itself into pieces which will fly around in every direction. It's like a bomb, except that most bombs require a trigger to blow and this requires a system to keep it from blowing up; any kind of glitch in the control computers and kaboom.
Coming to think of it: given that someone has to build and service a windmill, and that you need a lot of them to replace even a single nuclear power plant, and that working on a high tower is inherently dangerous, which would actually cause more deaths, wind or nuclear ?
One of the reasons the society - whose coordination center the government is - exists in the first place is to assist people in emergencies. It is hardly unreasonable to expect it to do its job.
Yes, of course. Fortifying in your own home rather than fleeing is clearly a sign of being deserving of Darwinistic culling. It implies sheepdom, rather than, say, carefully weighting the advantages of having shelter and being able to guard your property against post-evacuation looting against possibly - not certainly, since they are unpredictable - being out of the storm's path but losing your property and quite possibly dying from lack of food, water and shelter on the run - remember, there's hundreds of thousands of other people on the run too.
This whole "people are sheep" has become a meme repeated by people with delusions of grandeur. Ironically enough, mindlessly repeating a meme makes these people themselves the very sheep they so despise.
No. There are not enough safe areas on Earth to hold all or even the majority of the population, and even those are safe only in relation to some other area. Add the facts that the tighter you pack humans, the easier it is for plagues and such to spread, the more dependent on infrastructure they become, and the more destruction any disaster that does happen causes, and it becomes obvious that "don't live in a dangerous area" is not viable advice.
Wouldn't it make more sense to simply store the top and bottom coordinates directly to the lookup table ?
In any case, you'd also need a Z-buffer to draw sprites correctly, especially if one is half behind a corner and half visible.
Actually, since one and zero is zero, it wouldn't change the actual data. However, it would change the representation of the data to allow for extremely efficient compression, thus freeing up a lot of hard drive space. This guy was simply doing his duty and doing it well.
Change of opinion is change, right ?-)
Actually, as it happens, cosmic rays have (orders of magnitude) more energy than LHC collisions, and bombard Earth's atmosphere all the time. So worrying about the LHC is like facing a firing squad and worrying that you're going to be mauled to death by the leader's chihuahua.
They proved that they're no different than the people who banished them ?
Hitler wasn't opposed on the basis of what he did to his people, he was opposed on the basis of invading other nations around him. Prior to said invasions he wasn't opposed, in fact he was widely admired.
I sincerely doubt that. But even if it were true, why would it make modern-day eqyptians undeserving of freedom ?
To the best of my knowledge Egypt has neither the military power or allies to start a large-scale war. The same is true of Iran. Perhaps you've been watching "Mummy Returns" too much ?
I think someone's projecting here.
No, we call them normal people. Or at least most people I've seen drunk, kid or adult, have simply been having fun.
It took the discourse straight to Hell, you semi-sentient brown-nosing hypocritical piece of illiterate chatterbot droppings. You fail the Turing test. I spit in the general direction of you and everyone who looks like you. Do you still abuse sexually immature simians, you evolutionarily backwards deviant ? I would tell you to fuck off, but that mental image is too disturbing to entertain.
For ruining this fine thread with your insane drivel, pond scum would recoil from calling you brother. The things Lovecraft dreamed of would be afraid to see the twisted mass of blood-sucking tentacles that is your mind. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on your necrotic soul, for not even those bound for the Pit deserve to bear your presence for all eternity.
You are filth. You are excrement. You are Ralph Spoilsport, Slashdot user 673134, and from the depths of cyberspace I stab at thee !
How is reading someone else's class notes cheating ? And how is it different from reading, say, a book on the subject ?
I suppose you could use those notes as a cheat sheet in a test, but then again, since the subject needs to be taught before the test, you could just as well use your own. So, enlighten me, for I simply don't get how passing your notes to someone else would allow them to cheat ?
Rosa Parks wasn't a student. A student is a subhuman with no rights, at least in respect to his school. That's what this case - and all others I've ever heard of - have made absolutely clear.
The question isn't whether he broke the law or not; he did. The question isn't whether he should be punished or not either; he should. No, the question is: should he be extradited to the USA, where he will be punished with a complete disproportionate jail sentence because the crime he did brought into light the negligence of a government institution ?
That's fine. It's his car, after all. Now if it was a government car, with a laptop full of sensitive information in the trunk, and your friend insisted on the thief getting decades of jail time simply because he brought your friends negligence into light... that would not be fine.
And lets face it: this guy didn't steal anything, nor did he hold up a store. He broke into a computer system chasing UFOs. He's guilty of digital trespassing at worst, while whoever is responsible for that computer is guilty of utter negligence of duty, which is a far more serious crime. That is the reason they want to go tough on him: to turn attention away from their own misdeeds. So no, bad security is not the red herring here, the UFO chaser is.
So some guy who went broke into a government computer to look for UFOs is the same as a guy who murdered his wife, and a psychopath besides. A fine example of logic, that.
And for the record, I'm sending you the social message "you've just said something unbelievably stupid" right now.
Having a few pennies more in no way compensates for ending the social programs, from free elementary education to emergency rooms and public libraries. The freedom you are talking about is the freedom to serve the rich as an indentured servant and then die in the streets when you're no longer useful.
No, the current assumption is that our economic system concentrates money and power into the hands of the few, and that these few are unrepentant psychopathic assholes who will happily watch the rest starve to death unless they are forced to do something about it.
It is necessary, thought - the alternative is a nasty and short life for almost everyone.
Well, I for one reject their whole platform. I suspect the public do too, and would even without any "conditioning". But of course that might indicate that there's a flaw in said platform, and who would want to believe that about their ideology ?
This makes the whole concept of patriotism utterly meaningless, since the sentence "I'm patriotic" can mean absolutely anything, and thus conveys no information. Words are only useful if they have a commonly agreed meaning; everyone redefining patriotism to mean whatever they want it to mean makes the word useless. This is true even in a free society.
Now excuse me, I need to go be patriotic in a toilet.
Better get fusion power working before that. Hydrocarbons (oil) can be manufactured easily from carbon dioxide and water once we have endless free energy for the power grid. And importing lots of smart people - nuclear physicists and engineers - would probably help a lot there.
The law of supply and demand says that this is impossible to ensure.
Because cutting taxes and spending will benefit the rich and harm everyone else, and most people are not rich.
Furthermore, all those "the poor should beg for charity in the streets" and "why should I pay for anyone's hospital bills ?" comments associated with libertarians make it very clear what life would be like for most people in a libertarian world: short and nasty. That's why libertarians will never hold a significant amount of power: their position is against the best interests of most people.
Finally, there's nothing like recession to drive home the need for social security.
So how much did get for writing that message ?